Psalm 130 (Revised)

Hi! Attached are score, audio (midi) and text for Psalm 130 (SATB unaccompanied)... Actually this is revised version of my previous work, and I was seeing if it's good to include this piece for my DMA composition audition this Fall...

Could anyone give me any comments on this piece so that I can modify it since there is still few months?

Thanks so much for your time, and have a good one!

You should probably put some notes in the piano staves if you're going to include the instrument, whether it's just for rehearsal or not.

Your harmonic language is interesting — I'm a huge fan of quartal harmony — but your harmonies / melodies seem to go nowhere. If you're going to use non-diatonic harmony, wonderful: just make sure you change up the intervals from time to time (you use almost exclusively perfect 4th intervals within voices). Plus, because of your heavy use of quartals, you introduce a lot of parallel fourths and fifths. Though not as taboo as it once was, it still makes for dry music when the voices go up or down by the same interval.

But I think the biggest issue with this work (and the others you posted here) is the lack of recognizable rhythm. Time signature changes are fine in moderation; this piece goes through so many rhythm changes that my brain just never catches on. It sounds as if you have forced the rhythm to match the words, instead of working out ways for the two to blend together. And no rhythm is almost an unforgivable offense in the realm of choral music (particularly an a cappella piece, lol). Despite the interesting harmonies and sweeping dynamic moments, it all sounded random — as if someone sat down at the piano and made this up on the spot. I know that's not the case, of course. Your challenge, as the composer of choral music, is to sit down with the text and tease out the natural rhythm of the words. You have to find ways to apply that rhythm(s) in a recognizable pattern throughout.

I would also be careful truncating some of the words. For example, in m. 29 you have the sopranos, altos, and tenors sing "ini." This is not a real word in English — even if you're using it as short for "iniquities" — and can come across as laziness on your part for not working out a better way to have moving parts with actual words from the text. Similarly, from mm. 40-46 all the voices sing a bit of nonsense. The text goes like this: "But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared." Your singers have these lines:

• Sopranos: "Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgive, Lord..."
• Altos: "Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgive, Lord, you..."
• Tenors: "Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgive, that you..."
• Basses: "Forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness. That..."

As you can see, none of them carry the text, which greatly confuses the listener. This isn't breaking any rules that I know of; it just damages your reputation as a writer of choral works if you don't write coherent words for your singers.

The bottom line is that I don't think it's ready for a competition just yet. You need to find ways to make this sound like a cohesive work, rather than just words set to random-sounding notes. Keep your harmonic language, see if you can change up some of the intra-voice intervals, and give this some good rhythmic patterns.

(I hope I don't come across as super harsh. You did ask for feedback to get this work competition-ready, and these are my remarks in light of that.)

Best,

Jörfi

The kind of echo you do at 1:04 is nice. I think there's more connection here but I more or less stick with Tónskáld advices and criticism. While some parts of the piece (I did like the beginning for example) have a lot of potential, they get kind of diluted on the lot of time signatures you add. Are they essential? I am sometimes myself an abuser of those so can't blame you but I believe you should ask if you're using this because you first wanted to or because there was some problem that apparently got fixed when adding or removing parts of the original measure.

There are some motives that don't sound totally good to me but it's a matter of tastes anyway. I'm referring to M(28-29) and the stacattos along the piece. Again, perhaps it is cause the midi and not cause the piece itself.

On M70 and so on I am not totally sure if a choir can mantain a minimum strength of forte and fff  as max. long enough, apart from that rapid ascension which to my knowledge and experience would not be easy at all to perform.

That said, I hope you keep sharing your scores here. It is always good to read and listen to new scores.

Kind regards!